Startup Watch: AllGoods

What problems do you solve and what products or services do you sell?

AllGoods is a modern online marketplace designed for Kiwis. We provide a platform for every day Kiwis to buy and sell for free. On top of this, we also provide a feature rich e-commerce solution for New Zealand businesses to host their online store while also providing them access to a New Zealand marketplace.

Who and where are your target customers?

Our target customers can be grouped into two:

1. All regular Kiwis who buy and sell in New Zealand.

2. NZ businesses who want to sell through a Kiwi marketplace or simply need an affordable solution to host their online store.

How and when did you first come up with the idea for your business?

AllGoods was born out of a sheer lack of innovation in New Zealand e-commerce. It was clear that NZ was expensive, inefficient and far behind the rest of the world when it came to the options available for selling online. But while the options available are lacking, e-commerce as a whole has been growing at a massive rate.

The AllGoods founding team came together in early 2017 to solve this problem by creating a modern and innovative platform for both regular Kiwis as well as NZ businesses. A lot of research has gone into overseas e-commerce platforms – we have taken the best parts and tailored our product to New Zealand.

What are your three biggest unique selling points?

2. Businesses can have their own customisable stores – it’s like if Shopify and AliExpress had a Kiwi baby. It’s a feature rich e-commerce solution that already integrates with Stripe, Shopify and Courier Post, while also giving businesses all the benefits of being part of a marketplace.

3. Our mobile app (released soon) is a massive selling point for both everyday users who can list something for sale in just a few seconds, as well as our business users who gain access to the mobile e-commerce market.

What are three things about your business that you are proud of?

1. Despite very little marketing after our soft launch, we now have over 500 Kiwi businesses using our platform equating to over 50,000 products.

2. The team have created an extremely complex and advanced piece of software rivaling the world’s best in a relatively short period of time.

3. Our product has been built alongside customer feedback from over 2000 on-site conversations which has really helped to perfect our market fit.

How do you market your business and what advice do you have for others around marketing?

So far, our marketing has been very minimal. Mostly through social media, Google and word of mouth. This has been one of the steepest learning curves for our team. Biggest advice for others would be to constantly talk about your product whether that be through email, social media or blogs – if you’ve stopped typing, you’re doing something wrong.

What’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in building your business so far?

One of our biggest challenges has been to disassociate ourselves from Trade Me. We have extremely big and fundamental differences, however as soon as you mention a platform for buying and selling online, Trade Me generally pops into people’s heads.

What is the biggest entrepreneur lesson you would like to share with other Kiwis thinking of starting their own business?

Get involved with the community. There is a lot of support and resources out there, but it all requires you to take the first step.